THE BELNORD COURTYARD

HOLLANDER DESIGN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

A sensitive revival of the Belnord Courtyard on Manhattan’s Upper West Side carefully balances the many aspects of restoration — aesthetic, original design intent, and materiality — with the needs of contemporary life. The renovation restores the spirit of one of New York City’s first landmarked landscapes into a jewel of classically inspired garden design.

Restoring this precious, landmarked courtyard was far more complex than merely recreating its original planting palette. The original design placed a series of stables directly beneath the courtyard, making it a landscape-on-structure with all the challenges of any rooftop design.

The Belnord’s gardens are contained within a 22,000-square-foot courtyard — the largest in the city when first constructed. It is a vast outdoor room, complete with clipped evergreen and boxwood hedges, scattered shade trees, zinc-finished aluminum planters filled with flowering plants, and elegant seating, all centered on The Belnord’s original, neoclassical marble fountain. The result is a garden that restores the garden’s historic spirit while ensuring it will thrive and function well for contemporary life.

The renovation restores the spirit of one of New York City’s first landmarked landscapes into a jewel of classically inspired garden design. HONOR

Continental

Towers

CONFLUENCE TEAM Confluence

Grund & Riesterer Architects

Leopardo

Structural Shop

Weber Consultants

Whitney Architects

Wingren Landscape

CATEGORY

General Design, Constructed

As one of the most ambitious office amenity spaces ever created in the Chicago suburbs, Continental Towers is an urban and sustainable new paradigm in suburban office repositioning. Overcoming massive structural limitations, the project completely transforms a bleak and underutilized parking garage rooftop, nearly an acre in size, into a verdant, multiuse setting for open-air work and fortuitous inter-generational employee interaction while still allowing social distancing.

The project completely transforms a bleak and underutilized parking garage rooftop into a verdant, multi-use setting for open-air work and fortuitous inter-generational employee interaction.

In the midst of a global pandemic where many are questioning the future of office development, the plaza deck at Continental Towers is a model for just what that future may look like: a space that accommodates large events and programs but is equally engaging for individuals and socially-distanced small groups. It is a space as socially vibrant as it is environmentally verdant, using a dynamic design to breathe fresh life and personality into an aging corporate campus. Continental Towers is a reminder to other dated office developments of what is possible with the principles of urban design, sustainability, and imagination.